The most valuable writing lessons I know
So lately, someone has been continually asking me "how do I write" and a lot of other people have asked me similar questions - "how do I write a book?" "how do I make my characters interesting?" "How do I know that I'm writing well" and so on. I could make a tutorial on how to write a book. Hell, I could write a book on how to write a book. Hundred of people already have. What that would do, I think, is bog people down with a lot of details that they may or may not need. Instead, I think I'll share some of the most important things that I've learned that has helped me with the process and become better than I have ever been. Lesson #1: Don't Wait for Inspiration This is the most common excuse that I've heard for people who want to do any kind of art - I'm just waiting to get inspired. If you wait for inspiration before you start writing you will die... never having written anything. That may be a slight exaggeration, but in my experience, the inspiration comes from the writing and not the other way around. The more that I write, the more ideas and scenarios and characters that come. The more that you do something, the more that you tend to want to do something. An object in motion stays in motion, and a still object stays still, until something disturbs them. Lesson #2: Don't be afraid to write shit Now, a final draft should be polished and it shouldn't be shit. The final product should be as good as you can possibly make it. However, most people in the "I need advice" category, aren't usually on the final draft. Let's start with the obvious - you need to write bad before you can write well. You need to draw bad before you can draw well. It's how skill works. At the start, you will be terrible. Even if you're "naturally gifted." But on the other side of things, what you think is shit... might not be shit. While writing, I frequently get thoughts of "this is shit. This is awful." But... in my experience, the only way through those issues is brute force. You need to tackle it head on and write through it, rewrite later. Otherwise, you'll most likely abandon that project and leave behind all of the not shit that you've already written. And... who knows, it might be not shit in hindsight. You may have written something awesome, and time just revealed it to you. It's the old maxim - perfect is the enemy of good. The first draft is going to be shit. Write it anyway. You need to before you can write the final draft. You need to dig through the dirt to get to the gold. There's a lot of ways to say this. That must mean it's important. Lesson #3: The best things you ever write will be things that surprise you too. Spontaneity is good It's good to plan. It's good to make outlines for your stories and your book, but you should always leave some room for spontaneity. My favorite parts of my book for instance, were things that I never planned for. For instance, April. I planned for her to have a lot of siblings that she wasn't too keen on, and for her to be showy - think Rarity from Friendship is Magic. However, while writing the book more ideas connected these two things. April's siblings became more famous and more successful than her, and more than she thought she could ever be, and it added depth to the character because it was beyond my planning capabilities. Remember, it's not just me who benefits from spontaneity. One of the greatest twists of all time, Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker's father... wasn't even planned when they made A New Hope. A lot of the greatest twists and moments probably weren't planned. They weren't calculated. They came out of an artist connecting the pieces that were already on the board. Lesson #4: The basic writing formula Here's the simplest formula of "how do I write a good story?" Create this character. Figure out what they want most in the world. Then be a giant fucking asshole and do everything in your power as the god lording over them to keep them from achieving that thing (barring killing them) until the end of the story. Almost every great character-driven story has been written using this formula, stories as old as The Odyssey to stories as new as The Hunger Games and everything in between. Lesson #5: The hardest part of a project is committing yourself to it After you've decided "I'm going to write this story no matter what happens" and sticking to it. It's all easier from there. A good foundation builds a mighty house. Lesson #6: Fear doing nothing "I want to write a book because I'm afraid of dying and leaving behind nothing." I don't believe you. If you TRULY feared doing nothing, you would have done something. Or at the very least, be doing something. Trust me, if you're afraid of dying and having done nothing... you WILL do something. That's an impressively pallateable fear. Lesson #7: The Two Types of Writers There are... generally speaking, two types of writers. There are the writers who love a piece of work and want to create something like that. The other type of writer is the one who creates a story that they want to see. Figuring out your motivations is a very useful tool moving forward and looking at which category you fall into more is a good starting place for that. So... what about the "I can do better" writers? They tend to fall into the latter category. There's a story that they want to see, but no one has done it well yet, or in exactly the way that they want to see it. If you're the type of character who frequently writes fanfiction, you... could actually be of either type. Lesson #8: Creativity is just logically connecting bits and pieces together into something new I get this one a lot "I'm not creative." The people who say this are looking at the problem wrong. For starters, it's impossible for a person to imagine something that they don't have a frame of reference for. They may have never seen a space ship before, but they've seen water ships. They can understand the basic difficulties of transportation. They could have seen other space ships in other science fiction works and understand more about them. The idea of flight doesn't make sense if there's no sky, and may have never come into fruition if there was nothing in the sky. They say there's nothing new under the sun because that's how human creativity works. Even if it's not direct plagiarism, almost every creativity idea you've had has had a reference somewhere else. It may have been in real life, a book, a movie, a song, or anything really. Use this to your advantage and keep your eyes open to art, culture, media, and people. Thrive on experiences, and think how they can mesh together. If you're "not creative" instead of struggling with a pen and paper... do something that you've never done before. See a movie in a new genre; go on an amusement park ride you were afraid of. Lesson #9: Save Everything Every stupid little tiny idea, every draft that you've ever written, every journal. Even if it was when you were a little kid. Especially when you were a little kid. You never know when an old idea is really cool and you'd want to tackle it again. You might even figure out that something you once thought was great actually ended up being terrible. This is a good thing. It means that you've gotten better. And if you do throw some stuff out, you'll end up kicking yourself when you get some vague notion of this "really cool idea" you had years ago. Lesson #10: Let your characters be themselves '''This seems to be a thing that a lot of people struggle with. You can create an encyclopedia of every little detail about your character, but I wouldn't consult it in the midst of things. Let the character do what they want. You might find that they have a wide discrepancy between your archives and what the character is most likely to do in that particular moment. People call this a "three dimensional character" but I think it's better described as a "four dimensional character." If a character does something that surprises you because it wasn't in your encyclopedia, that's generally a good thing. It means that they've developed. That they've gone beyond who they were and they aren't really the same person as before. '''Lesson #11: Just write Seriously, what's stopping you? Keep asking yourself "why am I not writing right now?" and if you don't get a good answer... then write. Why are you still reading this? Write. Category:Miscellaneous